Nessie...Why??, page 1

From this amazing book.... much much more on the topic as well...

www.creationism.org...

Scotland's famous Loch Ness Monster is too often thought to be a recent product of the local Tourist Board's efforts to bring in some trade, yet Loch Ness is by no means the only Scottish loch where monsters have been reported. Loch Lomond, Loch Awe, Loch Rannoch and the privately owned Loch Morar (over 1000 ft deep) also have records of monster activity in recent years.

Indeed, there have been over forty sightings at Loch Morar alone since the end of the last war, and over a thousand from Loch Ness in the same period. However, as far as Loch Ness itself is concerned, few realise that monstrous reptiles, no doubt the same species, have been sighted in and around the loch since the so-called Dark Ages, the most notable instance being that which is described in Adamnan's famous 6th century Life of St Columba.

On hearing this, and with never a thought for his own safety, the brave saint immediately ordered one of his followers to jump into the freezing water to see if the monster was still in the vicinity.

Adamnan relates how the thrashing about of the alarmed and unhappy swimmer, Lugne Mocumin by name, attracted the monster's attention. Suddenly, on breaking the surface, the monster was seen to speed towards the luckless chap with its mouth wide open and screaming like a banshee. Columba, however, refused to panic, and from the safety of the dry land rebuked the beast.

Whether the swimmer added any rebukes of his own is not recorded, but the monster was seen to turn away, having approached the swimmer so closely that not the length of a punt-pole lay between them.

Columba, naturally, claimed the credit for the swimmer's survival, although the reluctance of the monster to actually harm the man is the most notable thing in this incident. The first swimmer had been savaged and killed, though not eaten, and the second swimmer was likewise treated to a display of the creature's wrath, though not fatally. Most likely, the two men had unwittingly entered the water close to where the creature kept her young, and she was reacting in a way that is typical of most species. Gorillas, bull elephants, ostriches, indeed all sorts of creature will charge at a man, hissing, screaming and trumpeting alarmingly, yet will rarely kill him or harm him so long as the man takes the hint and goes away.

We can rely on it that Columba's follower, utterly lacking his saintly master's fortitude, had begun the process of taking the hint in plenty of time for the monster to realise that killing him would not be necessary.